by ProfDave, ©2021
(Mar. 25, 2021) — Sunday is Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week for Christians. It coincides this year with the Passover for our Jewish friends. Christians celebrate a spiritual deliverance; Jews a national deliverance. Both are based on historical events.
Passover starts Saturday at sundown. It commemorates the night that God set Israel free. Did it actually happen? If not, how do you account for the existence of Jews today? Something happened that welded Egyptian slaves into a nation and a religion that has survived repeated decimation, dispersion, and millennia of exile. God is no pansy. His judgment on Egypt left death in every home. How un-loving, you say, but God is also justice. He provided an escape, an amnesty that was available to all through the blood of the Passover lamb. All you had to do was kill a lamb, sprinkle the blood on your door frame, and stay indoors! All the homes that accepted God’s provision were spared. Not just spared, but in the morning they were free from their slavery – through the blood of the Lamb. Hmmh. Are you free yet? Has the blood of the lamb been sprinkled on the door-frame of your heart? Or are you still under God’s justice? Has God provided a lamb?
On the day foretold by the prophet Daniel centuries earlier, and as described by Isaiah and Zechariah, Jesus presented himself as the “Anointed Prince,” the Messiah, entering Jerusalem on a donkey, like a coronation parade, and cleansing the temple. Zechariah 9:9: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your King is coming to you; He is just and having salvation, lowly and riding on a donkey.”
To this point, Jesus of Nazareth had taught with uncanny authority and a power beyond this world, leaving a trail of healed bodies and souls in his wake. Large crowds of simple folk and unsavory characters gathered to hear him. Until now, he had evaded those who wanted to make him some kind of a king. But for those in leadership, he was a dangerous outsider and a definite threat to the status quo. Now he rode straight into confrontation, accepting royal adulation, and driving the High Priest’s concessionaires out of the Court of the Gentiles.
But this was a strange “march on Jerusalem,” beginning with Jesus weeping over the city. Some “triumphal entry.” He bore no weapon but his heart. The common people acclaimed him, but there was something wrong. Instead of seizing the fortress Antonia and destroying the Roman garrison, he seized the Temple and drove out the profiteers! He challenged, not the occupation of Rome, but the corruption of the religious elites! Malachi 3:2-3: “But who can endure the day of His coming? . . . For He is like a refiner’s fire and like launderers’ soap . . . He will purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer to the Lord an offering in righteousness.” The Gospel of John clearly shows him goading the stuffed shirts of the Temple to recognize who he was. Was that why they did away with him? Because they knew – and rejected? Or maybe not. What would you have done in their shoes?
“My kingdom is not of this world,” Jesus said on Friday. In contrast to the Judaism of the Law (Pharisees) and the Judaism of the temple establishment (Sadducees), he represented a Judaism of the heart – God in person. You can imagine why the establishment was not best pleased. “By what authority do you do these things?” they demanded.
That is a question for Palm Sunday. By what authority does Jesus clear the temple? By what authority did he heal diseases, exorcise demons, raise the dead and forgive sins? By what authority has he transformed lives for the last two millennia and claimed the throne of our own hearts? Was it the authority of a mad prophet? A revolutionary moralist? A charlatan? A demon? Or the authority of the Word of God?
The question of the week: Who was/is Jesus? The Lamb of God?
Who was/is Jesus? A wizard or sorcerer with magical powers? This was a contemporary suggestion. For a good Jewish boy, this was about the worst accusation imaginable. The occult was strictly forbidden among Jews. There is nothing in the eye-witness accounts of his teachings that would suggest anything of the kind. He claimed to act only in God’s power and at His direction. Jesus was accused of using the power of Satan to perform exorcism. His answer is classic: “A kingdom divided against itself cannot stand.” If he cast out demons by the power of Satan, then how did the priests and rabbis do it? Explaining the “miracles” of the New Testament is a cottage industry among skeptics, but some explanations are more far-fetched than the original. Houdini escaped from a lot of things, but not from the grave. Or was it the finger of God?
We wouldn’t like a real God or his messenger to show up, would we? Least of all if we were religious people. Least of all religious leaders in full enjoyment of their perks – honor, wealth, power. And the rest of us are ready with the palm branches on the bandwagon as long as it looks promising, but along the via dolorosa we cry “crucify him.” Don’t we? Take up your cross and follow? No thanks!
David W. Heughins (“ProfDave”) is Adjunct Professor of History at Nazarene Bible College. He holds a BA from Eastern Nazarene College and a PhD in history from the University of Minnesota. He is the author of Holiness in 12 Steps (2020). He is a Vietnam veteran and is retired, living with his daughter and three grandchildren in Connecticut.